The Blood Ship Part 15

"Shut up!" exclaimed Chips. "That's d.a.m.n fool talk to come out o' your mouth."

"Oh, you have softened me, Mary, you have unmanned me!" I heard Newman say. "I came to this s.h.i.+p to kill, and now--there is little bitterness left in my heart. I am only eager now to be gone with you beyond his reach."

"I am glad, more glad than I can tell," the lady told him. "His lies have ruined your life, and mine, but I do not want you to stain your hands with his blood. Oh, there has been so much bloodshed! You must not; you have promised!"

"Yes, and I will keep my promise," said Newman. "But you have promised, too, and you know how I qualified my promise. We cannot take too many chances with him, and you know that he has no scruples about shedding blood. He knows, he must know, that I do not intend to leave you in his hands; he must realize, also, that now he is not safe so long as either of us is alive and at large. Why, dear, you know the trap he is preparing!"

"Yes, yes, I know," was the response. "But my prayer is that we may get away before he is ready."

"It is my prayer, too," said Newman. "I gladly give up my revenge for your sake, little love. But I intend to protect you, and myself--that, too, is my promise."

"Here comes Fitz now," said Sails.

It was touch-and-go with discovery a second time as Mister Fitzgibbon stamped down the ladder. But he was already bawling for the watch, and had his eyes fixed straight ahead; and immediately he went forward with the tradesmen at his heels.

I waited until the mate's bellow sounded well forward, and I was sure my retreat would be un.o.bserved. Then I placed my lips to the opening in the sail-locker door and called softly, "Newman! Come out of that at once; you are spied upon!"

I heard the lady gasp, and knew my message was received and understood.

I waited for no other response. I scuttled away from that perilous spot as fast as caution permitted my legs to travel. Jack Shreve was no Newman; I had not his cool nerve when it came to flouting h.e.l.l-s.h.i.+p rules. In truth, I was in a blue funk all the time I was aft, for fear I would be discovered. And there was another reason for my haste in getting forward. There was a sudden uproar in front of the foc'sle that bade fair to carry through the s.h.i.+p.

There was trouble in the air; I could sniff it as I ran. Although time enough had elapsed since the mate sang out his order to man the braces, the watch was not yet at the rail; and this was a strange thing in a s.h.i.+p where men literally flew about their work. The trouble was in the port foc'sle; I could see the crowd bunched on the deck before the door, and Mister Fitzgibbon's voice had risen to a shrill, obscene scream as he poured blistering curses upon some luckless head.

I dodged across the deck and around the starboard side of the deck house, and thus came upon the scene in a casual manner, as though I had just stepped out of my own foc'sle to see what was wrong. I mingled with my watch mates, who had turned out to a man to watch the row.

Over on the port side of the deck a royal s.h.i.+ndy seemed to be preparing. Aye, the mate had at last struck fire from his squareheads!

They were on the verge of open rebellion. The stiffs of the port watch had fallen to one side, and stood quaking and irresolute, but the squareheads, all of them, were bunched squarely between the mate and the foc'sle door, and to the mate's stream of curses they interposed a wall of their own oaths. Mister Fitzgibbon had his right hand in his coat pocket, and all hands knew that hand was closed about the b.u.t.t of a revolver; moreover, the tradesmen stood on either side of him, prepared to back him up in whatever course he chose to take. They were good men, those tradesmen, fighting men, and skilled in just such battles as this promised to be. The port watch Sails, who stood nearest to me, was armed with a heavy sheet pin, and he stood with his face half turned towards the starboard side. Aye, they were canny fighters--if it came to blows they would not be taken in the flank by surprise.

Mister Fitzgibbon was swearing over the heads of the squareheads. He threw his words into foc'sle. He was calling upon Holy Joe, the parson, to come out of it blasted quick and be skinned alive, b'Gawd!

Broken bones were being promised to poor Holy Joe. That was why the squareheads were showing fight--not to protect their own skins, but to save the parson from the mate's wrath. For their little Nils was dying, and Holy Joe was by his side, praying for his pa.s.sing soul. As I learned afterwards, when the mate sang out for his watch to man the braces, all jumped to obey save the parson; he stayed with Nils. His absence was noted immediately, for the mate was lynx-eyed; and Fitzgibbon was all for invading the foc'sle and hauling out the truant by the scruff of the neck. Aye, Mister Fitz was all for teaching a lesson with boot and fist, for Holy Joe was a small man and a pacifist, fair game for any bucko. But the squareheads would not have it so.

For Nils was dying, and Holy Joe was praying for his soul.

Suddenly Mister Fitzgibbon stopped cursing, and in a voice that meant business, ordered the watch aft to the braces. The stiffs tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to obey; but not a squarehead budged.

They still stood between the mate and his victim. So he drew the revolver out of his pocket, and pointed it at Lindquist.

"Lay aft--or I'll splatter lead among you!" he said.

He meant it. He would have shot Lindquist, I am sure, for winging a man, or worse, meant little to the mate of the _Golden Bough_, and the squarehead bravely stood his ground. But the threat to shoot into the men who were s.h.i.+elding him had the effect of drawing the parson out of the foc'sle. He suddenly appeared in the lighted doorway.

"_Oho_, that brought you out of it--_hey_, you sniveling this-and-that!" hailed Fitzgibbon. He lifted his aim from Lindquist, and brought the weapon to bear upon Holy Joe. "Step aft, here, you swab, or I'll drill you through, s'help me!"

The words brought a menacing growl from the squareheads; there was a stir among them, and they seemed about to fling themselves upon the trio. But Holy Joe checked the movement with a word.

"Steady, lads," said he. "No violence; obey your orders. Spread out, there, boys, and let me through; I will speak with him."

That was what he said, but it was _how_ he said it that really mattered. Aye, Holy Joe might have been the skipper, himself, from his air. He spoke with authority, in a deep, commanding voice, and the squareheads instantly gave him the obedience they had refused the mate.

They did not, indeed, tumble aft in the wake of the stiffs; but they did spread out and make a lane through their midst down which Holy Joe advanced with quick and firm step. Right up to Fitzgibbon he walked, and stopped, and said to the bucko's face,

"Put away that weapon! Would you add another murder to your crimes?"

To me, to the mate and his henchmen, indeed, to all hands, it was a most astounding situation. And perhaps the most surprising element in it was the fact that Holy Joe was not immediately shot or felled with a blow, and the additional fact that none of us expected him to be.

It was the stiff, not the officer, who commanded the deck that moment.

By some strange magic I could not as yet fathom, the little parson had a.s.sumed the same heroic proportions Newman had a.s.sumed the day he chased the skipper from the p.o.o.p. Oh, it was no physical change that took place; it was rather as if the man doffed a mask and revealed himself to us in his true self. There he stood, a full head shorter than his antagonist, with his head tilted back to meet the larger man's eyes, and Bully Fitzgibbon quailed before his gaze.

I watched the little man, awe-stricken. I had been bred to wors.h.i.+p force, it was the only deity I knew, and Holy Joe was in my eyes the symbol of force. He radiated force, and it was a strange and wonderful force. I had glimpsed this power in Newman; now, for the first time in my life I saw it fully revealed. The only kind of force I had known or imagined was brute force, the kind of force Mister Fitzgibbon epitomized; but now, in this duel of wills that was taking place before my eyes, I saw another and superior power at work. It was a force of the mind, or soul, that Holy Joe employed; it was a moral force that poured out of the clean spirit of the man and subdued the brute force pitted against him.

"Put down that weapon!" Holy Joe repeated.

Slowly, the mate lowered his arm.

The parson turned to the squareheads; aye, he turned his back full upon the bucko, and the latter made no move against him.

"Obey your orders, men," Holy Joe said to the sailors. "Go to your work as he commands. I will stay with the boy."

The squareheads obeyed without question. They knew, just as all of us knew, that their little champion was in no danger of mishandling, at least not at that moment. They trooped aft, heavy-footed, murmuring, but docile, and joined the stiffs at the lee braces. Holy Joe, now alone on that deck so far as physical backing went, turned again to the mate. But indeed he needed no physical backing; his indomitable spirit had cowed the bucko.

"Your men will give you no further trouble, sir; they are at their stations," said he.

It was the first time he had used the "sir." For an instant it seemed a weakening. It gave Mister Fitzgibbon the heart to bl.u.s.ter.

"I ordered you aft with the rest," he began. "What d'ye mean----"

"I have other work to do this watch--as you know," interrupted the parson. He said the words so solemnly and sternly they sounded like a judgment; aye, and they nipped the rising courage of the mate. He could only mumble, and stammer out,

"You--you refuse duty?"

Holy Joe was silent for an instant. All of us were silent. One could have heard a pin drop upon the deck. Then, out of the port foc'sle, a dreadful sound came to our ears, a low, strangled moan. It stabbed the vitals of the most hardened of us; with my own eyes I saw the mate tremble. Aye, in some way Holy Joe had sent a fear into the brute soul of Fitzgibbon; in some way he had sent a fear into the brute souls of us all, and, at least in my case, a great wonder. The pain-filled wail of Nils, coming as it did, seemed magic-inspired to light for me a universal truth. I felt it crudely, saw it dimly, but there it was, dramatized before my eyes, the age-long, ceaseless battle between the Beast in Man and the G.o.d in Man, the resistless power of service and sacrifice. Aye, and Holy Joe's softly spoken reply to the mate's words confirmed what I saw and felt.

"You speak of my duty, sir," said he. "I see it--and do it!"

With that he turned on his heel and walked into the foc'sle.

When he had disappeared something seemed to have gone from the air we breathed, something electric and vitalizing. There was an immediate let down of the nervous tension that had gripped us, a common sigh, and a half-hysterical sn.i.g.g.e.r from some fellow behind me. Mister Fitzgibbon seemed to come out of a trance; he shook himself, and stared at Sails and then at Chips. He glared across the deck at us of the starboard watch. He even swore. But there was no life to his curse, and he made no step to follow the defiant stiff into the foc'sle.

Instead, he went to the job at hand, and quite obviously sought to regain mastery and self-respect by sulphuric bl.u.s.tering towards the men bent over the ropes. He was a defeated man. He knew it, and we knew it.

A hand fell upon my shoulder. Newman stood behind me.

"A brave act and a brave man," said he. "But they will not let him keep his triumph." After a pause he added, "They dare not."

CHAPTER XIV

I seized Newman's arm and led him aside, intending to impart my news.

But eight bells struck, and while they were striking, Mister Lynch's voice summoned the starboard watch to a.s.sist in the job the mate had started. We hurried aft with the crowd, and I found chance to say to him no more than,

"Be careful; someone is spying upon you. Boston told me--and I saw him."